Hunt is on for source of beach garbage

Dramatic wash-ups like a giant orange buoy or an old shipwreck grab all the attention, but they are merely a fraction of the tons of detritus that finds its way onto area beaches.

PATRICK CASSIDY

BARNSTABLE — When a giant orange buoy was found on Sandy Neck Beach last week, crowds gathered. A shipwreck that landed on Newcomb Hollow Beach in Wellfleet four months ago drew thousands to view its skeletal remains.

But these dramatic wash-ups are merely a fraction of the tons of detritus that finds its way onto area beaches. It is also far from the most dangerous material adrift in the world's oceans, according to researchers.

"We do not have a good handle on the ocean debris problem in the Atlantic," Holly Bamford, director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Marine Debris Program said in an interview last week.

Most of the garbage on local beaches does not draw a throng of people and is far less historic than a century-old shipwreck. Plastic bags, deflated balloons and cigarette butts lack the star power of a mystery buoy or a stranded dolphin or whale.

The quantity of plastic and other debris littering the planet's oceans appears to be growing, though, according to Bamford and others who are scrambling for clues about where the troublesome trash comes from and what to do about it.

In many cases the source is likely nearby, Bamford said.

"It seems a lot of it is domestic," she said. "I'm not sure that it's being transported across the ocean to our shores."

In 2001 lab waste from Boston-area schools was found washed up on Chatham beaches.

Fishing gear makes up much of the debris found on and near New England beaches, Bamford said. If the gear is left to float, it may be a dangerous trap for fish and marine mammals such as the right whales in Cape Cod Bay, Bamford said.

Another source of oceangoing trash is container ships, many of which ply the waters off Cape Cod. A ship off Nantucket in 1997 lost 23 containers overboard, including one with a car inside and another with candy that eventually washed ashore on the east side of the island.

In 1995 the National Academy of Sciences estimated that 13 million pounds of manmade material is lost in the world's oceans each year, but that is likely a conservative estimate and difficult to update, Bamford said.

The trash that makes it onshore is typically very different from what is found submerged just offshore, she said.

But the extent of the debris problem in the Atlantic Ocean is less understood than the problem in the Pacific Ocean.

Over the past 10 years researchers have studied trash trapped in a current-crafted vortex in the Pacific.

"We thought, and others also thought, the collection area was twice the size of Texas," said Marieta Francis, acting executive director for the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, a nonprofit California-based research group that specializes in ocean debris.

Algalita's founder, Capt. Charlie Moore, first discovered vast amounts of plastic and other litter suspended in the ocean north of Hawaii in 1997.

Since then Algalita researchers have documented debris concentrated in two areas of the Pacific known as gyres.

A gyre is a pile of water pushed together into a large vortex by winds and currents, according to Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a Seattle-based expert on tracking material that washes up onshore.

The North Atlantic has two large gyres in which garbage collects, Ebbesmeyer said. Close to the Cape another, smaller gyre exists that stretches from around New Jersey in an elliptical pattern to an area east of Nova Scotia. Separated from the Gulf Stream current, New England's gyre keeps debris that enters the ocean here from being dragged out into the middle of the Atlantic, Ebbesmeyer said.

"Garbage is going to tend to be trapped back in your area," he said. "It doesn't get flushed out."

The Sandy Neck buoy's origin remains a mystery. It was sold through a distributor, according to Jerry Thermos, president of Marine Fenders International, the company that made the buoy. But the buoy was probably sold to someone in the southeastern U.S., he said.

For all anyone knows this buoy was in the gyre off New England, Ebbesmeyer said. "We just don't know."

If it were left to degrade, it would break down into a "trillion pieces," much like the other small pieces of plastic afloat on the world's oceans, he said.

Those small pieces could pose a significant threat to marine animals, according to Carol "Krill" Carson, a Middleboro marine biologist who gives nature talks on the Captain John boats out of Plymouth.

"Some animals directly go for the stuff because they think it's a food item," Carson said.

Other animals, like baleen whales and the basking shark that Carson studies, merely filter the water for phytoplankton.

"If there's anything floating in that water like any kind of plastic marine debris," Carson said, "I have a feeling it goes in the mouth."

The impact on birds and other marine animals of ingesting plastic is still unclear, Carson said.

Patrick Cassidy can be reached at pcassidy@capecodonline.com.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.